How to differentiate between ‘pekarangan’ and ‘perkarangan’ in Malay

In this post, I will discuss two words in Malay which poses problems to learners of the Malay language.
These two words are ‘pekarangan’ and ‘perkarangan’.

The word ‘pekarangan’ means courtyard or compound around one’s house and ‘perkarangan’ means ‘pertaining to coral’. I always help my students to remember the difference by the ‘r’ in the word ‘perkarangan’. They are asked to remember that ‘r’ can stand for rock which is ‘batu’ in Malay. ‘kawasan perkarangan’ means ‘coral area’ and its explanation in Malay is ‘kawasan batu karang’. They can relate once they see this and they always laugh when I ask them to remember ‘The Rock’.

The following are their usage in sentences:
1 Aminah sering mengekalkan kebersihan pekarangan rumahnya.
(Aminah always maintains the cleanliness of the compound of her house.)
2 Para pelancong berkunjung ke Pulau Redang untuk melihat kawasan perkarangan yang indah di sana. (Tourists frequent Redang Island to see the beautiful coral area there.)